


A Long Time Homecoming

by BaristaBeech



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Everybody is just doing their best, Healing, Hurt, Malcolm is struggling, Malcolm you ARE the father, Martin Being An Asshole, Martin also cares about his kids though, Some West wing quotes, its his one redeeming quality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28798851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaristaBeech/pseuds/BaristaBeech
Summary: Malcolm was having a hard time lately.Alright, maybe that was the understatement of the year- he was a mess. Cases had dried up (how that could happen in New York was beyond him) and his mother still insisted on shoving herself into his private life at every turn, he should really change the locks again. And then there was the matter of his visits to Dr. Whitly.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In summary, a couple of broken people come to Malcolm through some unexpected circumstances, and they've seen some shit, so they're gonna help Malcolm deal with his shit, cause that's what family is for, right?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	1. Back to Work

Malcolm was having a hard time lately.

Alright, maybe that was the understatement of the year- he was a mess. Cases had dried up (how that could happen in New York was beyond him) and his mother still insisted on shoving herself into his private life at every turn, he should really change the locks again.

And then there was the matter of his visits with Dr. Whitly. As per the agreement, he still came twice every ten days (which he was stretching as much as possible). Malcolm had been sitting through hours and hours of Dr. Whitly reminiscing on memories from Malcolm’s childhood. All sorts of things had been dredged up from Malcolm’s heart. 

And once again, there hadn’t been any interesting murders in the last few weeks to distract him. 

Gil had, of course, been delighted that Malcolm wouldn’t be at crime scene after crime scene. According to him, it would give Malcolm time to “get a life”- like Malcolm knew the first thing about socializing with anybody without his buffers there. He hadn’t had a social life since college when he thought he was going to get a “fresh start” from being the Surgeon’s son. That had lasted about 3 whole months. A new record for him. 

So here he was, puttering around his house trying to keep busy. 

He was just about to decide to go out for a walk and get some actually edible food when his phone rang. It was Gil!

“Gil? Has there been a murder?” Malcolm answered, trying not to sound too terribly excited. 

He failed. Horribly. 

“Yeah, I got one over off West 57th and 11th Avenue. I’ll text you the address” Gil replied, rolling his eyes at Bright’s eagerness. Why couldn’t he just relax for a little while?

Malcolm immediately lept into action and got his clothes ready and told Gil “I’m already on my way!”

“Alright, kid. Just try to not trip over your shoelaces in your excitement this time, huh?”

It was now Malcolm’s turn to roll his eyes “that was one time! And I was like twelve!”

Regardless Malcolm did, in fact, trip over his shoelaces while struggling to get out the door. 

When Malcolm arrived at the scene he felt refreshed. There was a problem to solve, a way to keep his brain busy and he could feel his mind becoming at ease with the familiarity of this. Crime scene, detectives, CSU, dead body. Things that made sense.

Malcolm saw Gil standing outside waiting for him when he rolled up and quickly dove underneath the tape that was blocking off the crime scene. JT gave him a nod of a greeting as the two walked past.

On the ride up, Malcolm could feel Gil staring at him, analyzing the good mood he was in despite his horrible appearance. 

“You couldn’t even stay away from this garbage for a week, could you?”

Malcolm shrunk down a little bit. He hated the fact that there was a murder, but he loved the puzzles and loved the game. Anything to keep his brain going forward and not staying still. Keep it outward, never inward. 

Gil realized what he was doing and moved his gaze. He didn’t mean to judge Malcolm, he just wanted to make sure that the kid was okay, and he got so few moments where the kid was still and happy. He had to preserve it in his mind, to help push through any doubts and concerns about Malcolm’s sanity in the times where Malcolm was not so outwardly okay. 

Gil tried so hard to have faith that he would be okay. He wouldn’t turn out like his father, he couldn’t turn out like his father. He just had to keep the faith in Malcolm. And be ready for him whenever he needed help. 

Gil placed a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder just before the doors opened and the crime scene was truly laid out before them. 

It was a nice place, tchotchkes strewn about the place. It was big as far as New York real estate goes, and there was a very clear color scheme happening. The big white walls with natural lighting via the floor to ceiling windows overlooking Hells Kitchen. Small pops of color that would look like confetti if you were standing far enough away. But the main colors dominated the space- white, gold, black, and blue. 

The owner of the house, Malcolm could see, matched the decor. She was wearing a deep navy blue housecoat, a white shirt, with black lounge pants and the shining gold accents of her jewelry. 

Dani started with the basics, “Amber Abbas, she’s a professor at MIT, lived alone, but the neighbors said she was friendly. Looks like the guy literally ripped her heart out of her chest. CSU is looking for it now.” 

Malcolm paced around the body, staring into her unseeing eyes. She was splayed out perfectly on the dining table, her arms almost perfectly straight.

“She’s definitely been posed, whoever did this wanted everything to be perfected for whoever found it. Like a piece of art, or a warning.” Bright commented. While Edrisa examined the body, Malcolm walked around the house. He could hear the mummers of his team and the other officers on duty in the back of his mind. 

He kept wandering through the house until he passed by a sudden flash of color out of the corner of his eye. He turned to his right and inched the door open further. 

“Hey Gil, come in here!” Malcolm called down the hallway. Gil came almost running, knowing how easily Malcolm could get himself into danger. He stopped in the doorway, trying to figure out why Bright had called him in here, Dani and JT close on his heels. 

“What is it, kid?” Gil asked as he glanced around the room. It was a little different, that’s for sure. The rest of the house only had accents of color, but this one was almost blooming. 

“This room is completely different! The entire rest of the house is minimalist, portraying an organized and simple taste. But this room? It’s overflowing!” Malcolm walked around admiring the deep purples and emerald greens, along with the dashes of gold. 

“Maybe it’s her room?” JT suggested. 

Dani shook her head, “No, we found her room, it’s down the other hall, has the same type of clothes that she was wearing in the same sizes and it looks just like the rest of the house.”

“Could be a guest room,” Gil commented. 

“No, no way. This is a woman who likes a very specific style, and as someone who also lived in a house with a very expensive and strict theme, let me tell you- nobody changes their entire home’s aesthetic unless it’s for a damn good reason.” Malcolm explained. Dani nodded her head in agreement, but JT and Gil just shook their heads in compliance. 

“And we’re sure she lived on her own?” Gil asked, looking at Dani and JT. 

“Pretty sure, she didn’t have any family living nearby, and the doorman said he never saw anybody come up to her place without her,” Dani replied. 

“This room had to be for someone.” Malcolm insisted. He started analyzing the room as a whole. There weren’t many personal touches besides the color and general comfort of the room. No clothes in the closet, and no little trinkets. 

As he paced, Malcolm noticed a creek in the floorboard underneath his foot. Strange, in a place like this, so new and well put together, the floors shouldn’t be so worn out. 

Malcolm dived down to the ground and lifted the rug covering the floorboard in question. Looking around he saw a metal ruler he could use to wedge it out on the desk and motioned for Dani to hand it to him. When she did, he pried it up and looked inside, with JT standing over his shoulder with the flashlight.

“Someone should get Edrisa,” Malcolm murmured. Gil shouted down the hall for Edrisa and then came quickly over to where Bright was. 

“What’s down there Bright?” Gil asked.

Malcolm looked up at him as Edrisa raced in with her kit and knelt beside Malcolm. 

“Her heart. Someone buried it under the floor”. 

Well, this case was off to a good start, Malcolm mused.


	2. Three puzzles, One Piece

After wrapping up at the crime scene, everybody headed back to the station to go over what they had so far. As everybody settled in, Malcolm pondered possible meanings for the heart being buried under the floor, and the room that seemingly broke direction of the rest of the house. CSU had also found ingredients for a dinner in Amber’s fridge, a home cooked dinner for two. That did seem to clash with the image that Amber’s neighbors and the apartment staff seemed to have of her. 

A quiet, kind woman who lived alone and preferred everything to line in with the vision of the home that she had made for herself. Why would she change that?

Malcolm thought back to his own childhood. When he and Ainsley had decided they wanted to start decorating their own rooms and dressing their own way, their mother had been reluctant, he supposed because of their already fractured family image, but in the end she had relented after seeing her children's need to become their own people. 

But this seemed different from that. There had been champagne in the fridge. And while the meal was to be home-cooked (presumably) it seemed a humble celebratory meal. JT had reflected on having many similar meals with his parents whenever he had done well in school. 

“She had to be expecting someone,” Malcolm said, “a homecoming, maybe? The celebratory meal, the walls freshly painted. Almost like a parent trying to welcome home a child. Whoever was coming, Amber was going out of her way to make them comfortable.”

“That could be true, but she doesn’t have any children of her own, no nephews or nieces. Maybe she was adopting? I could check with DCS?” Dani replied. 

Gil nodded. “Do that, see if she was applying for a specific child or maybe she was looking to become a foster mother.”

“You thinking maybe a birth parent got mad that she was looking to take in their kid?” JT speculated. 

“It could be. There are 400,000 children in foster care in America right now, and 13,000 are in New York. That’s not a very narrow suspect list” Malcolm pointed out. “We should also get a paint chip, and send it to the lab, we could date back when the room was painted over based on its oxidation level. And we should check with her coworkers and friends, see if they had any idea when the room got painted over- whoever killed her either loves or hates the person that room was for, and resented Amber for having them there.”

“Might be an ex that didn’t want any kids in the picture too or a romantic prospect that felt scorned about being put behind this kid.” Dani continued. 

Gil’s head snapped up at that. “Guys I think we’re missing something.”

Malcolm and the others looked at him questioningly, Gil continued.

“If the dinner was for that night, for the kid that was gonna be coming home, then where is the kid?” 

And with that, the detectives kicked into high gear, bolting for DCS so they could figure out who this missing kid was and then figure out where the hell they went. 

As per usual though, the minute Malcolm started digging into his case, he felt a buzzing in his pocket. 

Claremont Psychiatric. 

Malcolm braced himself as he brought his phone up to his ear. “Hello Dr. Whitly, how can I help you?”

“My boy! I just called to get the details of this newest case we’re on! I saw some updates from Ainsley on the news and I saw you walking in the background! So what is it? Decapitation, drowning, flaying?” Martin gushed. 

“The case that I am on, involves an MIT professor, a suspiciously colorful room, a dinner for two when there should only be one, a possible missing child, and a heart under the floorboards,” Malcolm replied, rolling his eyes. If he could get through just one phone call with either of his parents without losing the will to live, it would be a success. 

“Oh, how interesting! This MIT professor seems a lot like you, hmm my boy?” Martin said.

“How so?” Malcolm asked, confused. What similarities did he have to Amer Abbas?

“Well, both highly intelligent loners, with a lack of flair in their wardrobe, and both involved in a salacious murder.”  
“Very nice.” Malcolm deadpanned, “maybe we could focus on the part where I said there was a possible missing child in all of this? One that nobody can find and that we haven’t even been able to confirm exists?”

“Well if you can’t confirm that the child even exists, then there’s not much point wasting energy on them, is there?” Martin replied. It really had been too long since his boy had called, his brain was going to mush hanging around all those detectives. If they hadn’t even confirmed a child’s existence then why would they bother chasing them down? Unless…

“Hmmm, maybe the reason you can’t find your child is because they’re the one that did the deed?” Martin speculated.

“Possibly, but not every child is a psychopath, there’s every chance the killer took the kid, or the kid saw something and got so scared that they ran away,” Malcolm argued. 

“Could be. How did they discover the body? It’s the weekend, surely nobody thought it suspicious that someone spent the weekend in their apartment.” 

“A call from one of the neighbors, apparently someone had mentioned hearing something in the hall that night, but nobody thought anything of it until Professor Abbas didn’t come down for her mail as she usually had every morning for the past 2 years that she’d lived there.” Malcolm explained. 

“So she was a creature of habit,” Martin said. 

“She was,” Malcolm replied, he looked over to where Gil was waving at him and as he did, inspiration struck him. “ Listen, I have to go.” 

“Oh, Malcolm, do remember to come to visit your dear father sometime soon!” Martin blurted out before Malcolm hung up and made his way over to the meeting room.

“I think I know why they buried the heart under the floor!” Malcolm exclaimed. “It’s to parody the Tell-Tale Heart! Whoever killed Amber wanted the person with the room to know that they consider her murder to be in their hands!” 

“Fit’s the original profile of a parent scorned I suppose, we should check any with histories of mental illness,” Gil replied. “We also just got done with DCS, and they didn’t have any adoption or foster applications from Amber Abbas recently.”

“Recently?” Malcolm questioned.

“Yeah, turns out, about five years ago when she was teaching at Tulane University she had put in an application to foster two kids.”

“Two kids, but there was only the room for one child and it only had the set up for one kid?” JT asked.

“Yeah the kids were a pair of twins, Leonardo and Theodosia Beauchamp.” Dani answered,” the application had been put in during a two month run in foster care before the cases against their mother, Marilyn Beauchamp were dropped. The twins were ten at the time.”

Malcolm dove into the stack of papers that Dani handed him. “It says here that the application was made right before the twins were put back into the custody of their mother, the same week actually.”

“Yeah, apparently Mom had left little Theodosia by herself for about 9 hours. One of their twin's Uncles found her and immediately called the police when he couldn’t get a hold of Marilyn, and Leonardo was nowhere to be found. She had returned home at the end of the 9 hours wondering what all the fuss was about, with Leonardo in tow.”

“Yeah, cause what could possibly be wrong about leaving a ten-year old by themselves for 9 hours,” JT muttered. 

“The Uncle, a Daniel Beauchamp, wanted to press charges, saying that this wasn’t the first time he had visited the house where Theo had been left alone. He reports that he and Samuel Beauchamp, the other uncle, had taken in both of the twins when they were only three after the first incident occurred. Looks like Marilyn got a sympathetic judge though, Marilyn claimed she had been dealing with depression and agreed to go to classes and therapy sessions in order to regain custody of her children.” Dani continued. Malcolm made it to a police report from when the twins were still ten, for some reason he had a nagging feeling in the back of his head. 

“And it says here that Theodosia then went missing for about two years after- when she was placed in the care of the Angels of Divine Prophecy church by her mother. After not being able to find her, police stepped in and immediately removed Leonardo from her custody and took him to live with his Uncle Samuel and Aunt Edith here in New York” Malcolm read. 

“After which, Daniel goes on the road occasionally with Samuel looking for Theodosia.” JT commented, “both brothers were raised by their Marine father and were professional bounty hunters at one point in their lives, they thought they could find her.”

“And that’s where the file ends. Marilyn wormed her way out of all charges but a New York judge declared that because she had violated the terms of her sentence that she wouldn’t be allowed to take custody of Leonardo.” 

“Maybe we need to talk to Samuel, Edith and Leonardo?” JT speculated.

“But if it was Theodosia that the room was for, why would she go to a woman who almost fostered her instead of her family?” Gil questioned. And to that, nobody had the answer. 

“Looks like we’re gonna have a lot of questions for this family, let’s try not to rip them to pieces by giving them hope, huh?” Gil said, looking directly at Bright, who only took mild offense. 

Everybody went off their own way Gil and Bright off to question the remaining Beauchamps while Dani and JT went to Edrisa for any updates on their body.

As they walked up the stairs to the Beauchamp home, Gil’s phone rang. He answered and listened intently, his face going grim. Bright wished he could hear what the other person was saying but the street was too loud to make anything out. Oh, also he probably shouldn’t purposely try to overhear Gil’s phone calls. That too. 

When Gil put his phone away he stopped Bright just before he rang the doorbell. 

“So apparently when JT and Dani were down with Edrisa talking about the case, Edrisa recognized the Aunt's name. She was killed last month in what police called a mugging gone wrong, where she had her heart almost completely carved out. They tried to contact Samuel, but apparently, he’s been too far up in the Apache maintains to get cellphone service to contact. He was chasing down a bounty with Daniel and nobody has heard from the two since.” 

“You thinking the uncle for all of this?” Bright asked, surprised. This made their job a little more difficult if their only person to connect the dots was a fifteen-year-old who was probably already grieving. 

“No, cell phone records have him making a call to Edith at a cafe right by an entrance point to the Apaches. He wouldn’t have had time to make the call there and get back unless he took a plane, JT and Dani haven’t found any flights that would have gotten him back here in time.” Gil explained. He rang the doorbell now that Bright had been updated. “Remember, no false hope. I don’t want to jerk this kid around if we don’t find her.” 

“Got it.” Malcolm replied. 

The young man who answered the door looked like he had seen a ghost. He had deep blue eyes that looked about as sunken as Malcolms and wavy brown hair. 

“Can I help you, officers?” The boy asked.

“Leonardo Beauchamp?” Malcolm asked. The kid nodded and clung to the doorframe a little tighter, no doubt remembering the last time cops had shown up on his front door. 

“We need to ask you a few questions. May we come inside?” Gil asked. Leonardo nodded and stepped aside, opening the door for the two men.

The house looked a little out of place considering it was in New York. The architecture and styling made it look much more similar to the opulent homes of the south than the cold and collected style of New York society.

“Leonardo-” Gil started. 

The boy held up his hand, “Please just call me Leo, nobody really uses my full name” 

“Alright. Leo, I need to ask you some questions about your Aunt and a woman named Amber Abbas.” Gil started. 

The boy looked up in alarm, “what happened to Amber?” 

The two investigators looked at each other, maybe at least some of this puzzle could come together. 

“So you knew Amber well then?” Malcolm asked.

“Yeah… Amber had been a friend of my mother’s when they were young. She had helped my sister a lot, took her to a lot of her classes when she taught at Tulane. She offered to foster us while my uncles fought for our guardianship.”

“She took your sister to her classes?” Gil asked, baffled at why someone would willingly take a young child to an ivy league school.

Leo huffed out a sad laugh before replying, “Yeah, Amber taught mechanical engineering and Theo was practically a genius. Amber always said Theo was her perfect TA.” 

“Did you know that Amber was in New York?” Malcolm asked that nagging feeling he had been feeling creeping up his neck again. 

“Yeah, we had met up a few times, but she mostly came here. We knew how much she liked her privacy” Leonardo answered, “ I think it was hard for her, she had been so close to my sister… coming here just tended to open old wounds.” 

“Had Amber mentioned wanting to foster again, the last time you saw her? Or remodeling?” Gil asked.

“No, but she had called recently, mentioned a surprise. She sounded so happy, I don’t think I’ve heard her that happy in a while.” 

“And what about your Uncle? Still, no luck contacting him?” 

“Not yet, but his first check-in isn't until the end of the week. Radios don’t work this far from the mountains, and cell phones are kaput too. I don’t know how I’m gonna tell him about Aunt Eddie.” Leo sighed. He headed for the kitchen, which was littered with photographs of the family. Bright could see some of Amber and presumably Theodosia. Of both of the twins and their uncles, and one of the twins with a dark-haired woman who Malcolm assumed was Edith. 

“Well, if anything comes to mind, or if you need anything- just give us a call,” Gil said, handing Leo his card. 

On their way back out, Malcolm kept his eyes on the pictures. In his mind he could picture it, a family so close to his, ripped apart by tragedy thought this one somewhat different than his own. He eyed all the images of a family trying to put itself back together without such central pieces. A mother and a daughter, one outcast for her actions and the other lost to the world. 

Malcolm's eye caught one last photo before they hit the door. And that photo hit him so hard he stumbled over the doorway and the door shut behind them.

“You okay, kid?” Gil asked while steading him.

Malcolm, looking as ghostly as the boy had when the door had first opened, turned to Gil and said, “Gil, I know his mother.”

“What? How did you just figure that out?” Gil exclaimed. He was wondering if Malcolm's current medication regimen was making him loopy. 

“Because when I dated her half my life ago, her name was Campbell, not Beauchamp.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up this fic will probably mostly be updating on the weekends due to me working that Dolly Parton 9 to 5 life. And thank you for the comments and kudos!!! <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> (Alyssa Milano voice) For just one kudos a day, you too can help an author in need.  
> But for real, please let me know if you dig it in the comments.


End file.
